Censorship: November 2007 Archives

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iranian court reopens Kazemi case

Iranian court reopens Kazemi case

Zahra Kazemi died in a hospital in Tehran in July 2003 Iran's Supreme Court has ordered a new investigation into the death of the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi, while in custody in 2003. Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said the court had objected to the acquittal in 2004 of an intelligence agent accused of beating her to death. He said judges had "found some formal flaws" in previous investigations. Kazemi, 54, died in Tehran in July 2003 having received head injuries during more than three days of interrogation. She was arrested on 23 June 2003 while taking photographs outside Evin prison in the north of the capital, but was never formally charged with any offence. The case severely strained relations between the Canadian and Iranian governments.

Kudos to Google, at least, for arguing that allowing Iranians to use GMail doesn't constitute "doing business with Iran". But shame on Microsoft and Yahoo! for not having the guts to wait until the government complains.

Iran booted from Yahoo!, Microsoft lists - UPI.com

SEATTLE, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Two U.S.-based e-mail services, Microsoft and Yahoo!, have taken Iran off their country lists. Yahoo! issued a statement saying it continually reviews its business operations to comply with U.S. restrictions on "conducting business in specified countries, such as Iran." "

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Iran remains an option for Google G-mail users. The company said it did not believe that keeping Iran on its country list violates the sanctions.

Sanctions in general are a mistake–they hurt the people who you most want on your side. But in all battles, information is a weapon, and in the modern age, the access to the internet is a critical component of that. Iran, China and other governments know that very well, and do their best to limit their people's access to information. When we impose sanctions that help them, we are playing right into their hands.

Farsi is currently one of the top-ten blogging languages. Until Iran blocked access, Iranians were the third largest group of users (after Brazil and the U.S.) of Google's Orkut social networking service. Somehow I don't think the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami (سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی) is doing a lot of blogging.

P.S. That last piece of Farsi was a test case. Someone who can actually read it, please let me know if it displayed correctly. I'm also interested as to whether Farsi displays correctly when entered in the comment forms (not that I'll be able to read any comments you leave in Farsi, but I can get them translated, so feel free.)